The Silver Bone

"Often called Ukraine's greatest living writer ... it is a gift for crime fiction fans that [Kurkov] writes in this genre." - New York Times Book Review

"A gripping whodunnit with surrealist flourishes . . . Kurkov brings to life an overlooked and much-contested episode in Ukrainian history, capturing the brutality with which Soviet forces first attempted to establish control over the city." - Washington Post

"A very intriguing and atmospheric novel by a highly accomplished writer. ... [The Silver Bone] is a fascinating read in the light of contemporary events." - Alexander McCall Smith, Bestselling Author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

"A glorious aural portrait of a city in dangerous flux ... The novel may be playful, but it poses fundamental questions at a time when bloody conflict has engulfed Europe again.. . . I finished The Silver Bone wishing to read more." - The Guardian

"If Nikolai Gogol and Raymond Chandler had collaborated, this might have been the result-absurdist Slavic magical realism grafted onto an entertaining whodunit. Beyond its pleasures as a noir, the chronicle of Kolechko's fight against nascent Soviet power easily reminds one of present-day Ukraine's struggle to preserve dignity in the face of oppressive forces." - The Atlantic

"[The Silver Bone is a] fascinating series launch . . . the finely drawn characters and harrowing descriptions of daily life in 1919 Kyiv leave a far more lasting impression than clever genre tricks ever could. With its earthy prose and stunning attention to detail, this stands apart." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Rich and compulsive, a modern classic in the making." - Anna Bailey, author of Where the Truth Lies

"[A] wonderfully gritty whodunnit" - Paul Muldoon, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

Translated from the Russian by poet Boris Dralyuk, Kurkov's prose is brisk but capacious, with a quiet flair. The innumerable annoyances and small indignities of living through conflict (persistent lice, gelatinous porridge, insufficient kindling, erratic power outages) are presented in all their grating detail. And though it is clear-eyed in its depiction of war's sheer senselessness, The Silver Bone has an unusual poetic lightness too. - Financial Times

"Mix[ing] elements of grim humor and surrealism . . . [The Silver Bone is] a winning offbeat crime novel that begs for a sequel." - Library Journal

"If Chandler thought that danger and corruption were endemic to the Los Angeles roamed by his detective Philip Marlowe, he should have taken a look at Kyiv. . . . One hopes and prays that Ukraine still has enough Samson and Nadezhdas-and Andrey Kurkovs-to escape soon from its long, ongoing collective misfortune." - The Bulwark

"Original and intriguing. Relocates the historical crime novel somewhere between Kafka and The Twilight Zone." - Frank Tallis, Author of Death in Vienna and Vienna Blood

"In the tradition of Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther . . . Kurkov sets crime-solving against the chaos of a turbulent era -- for his Samson Kolechko, the upheaval of Ukraine in 1919, when Cossacks, the Red Army and their White opponents, and even Chinese Communists battled in streets of a Kiev darkened by power failure ... [The Silver Bone] poses haunting moral questions about defending order in perilous days, questions that reverberate a century later in Ukraine and around the world." - David O. Stewart, Award-winning historian and author of The Lincoln Deception

"An atmospheric police procedural whose protagonist battles personal tragedy and a tangled system to solve his first case." - Kirkus Reviews

"Kurkov melds history with elements of magical realism and offsets the grim atmosphere with random bouts of humor." - Booklist